Supercars Championship gears up for rights talks

Australian motor-racing series the Supercars Championship has said it will commence talks in earnest this year over its next set of domestic and international rights agreements.

Supercars is currently engaged in domestic rights deals with commercial broadcaster Ten, pay-television operator Foxtel and pay-television broadcaster Fox Sports.

The agreements are for six years, from 2015 to 2020, and are worth a total of Aus$241m (€147.9m/$167.9m). When signed in December 2013, the agreements represented record domestic deals for Supercars. However, officials will enter fresh talks with the media landscape having changed significantly since then.

Deals for international coverage outside of Australia and New Zealand also expire at the end of 2019, while a new agreement will be needed for Bathurst 12 Hour, the annual endurance race which Supercars owns and operates in partnership with the Bathurst Regional Council.

Supercars Championship chief executive Sean Seamer told the Auto Action website: “We’ll certainly start to get ready for it. We have other things coming up, too. The Bathurst 12 Hour rights come up, our international distribution rights come up as well – so there will be more activity in the space (in 2019) than what there has been.”